


In Which Kit Is An Interfering Familiar

by Khashana



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Witchcraft, Fic and podfic together, Hurt/Comfort, Interfering Kit, M/M, Parse Bingo, Podfic, Podfic Length: 10-20 Minutes, Soulmate AU, Warm and Fuzzy Feelings, everyone has to look after kent because he won't do it himself, magic shop au, soul song
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-30
Updated: 2018-06-30
Packaged: 2019-05-31 04:17:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,779
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15111647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Khashana/pseuds/Khashana
Summary: Kent runs a magic shop. Jeff is a technology witch on the same block. Kit has opinions.





	In Which Kit Is An Interfering Familiar

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Restful_Insomniac](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Restful_Insomniac/gifts).



> Restful asked for this, and then proceeded to write the first ~550 words for me. For Parse Bingo, hitting the squares Modern Witch, Hurt/Comfort, and Soul Song.
> 
> Find the podfic [on my site](https://khashanakalashtar.wordpress.com/portfolio/in-which-kit-is-an-interfering-familiar/) where you can also see the moodboard [nerdflighter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nerdflighter/pseuds/nerdflighter) made for it!

His magic shop isn't really what you would expect a magic shop to look like, is what he tells himself, but really it's exactly what you'd expect a magic shop to look like.

It has the aura of a used book store, but the unmistakable scent of a forest in the spring after it rains. There are various shelves, stuffed with books and pamphlets that look like they're all on the verge of falling out, but never do.

Kent doesn't really know how he came to own this magic shop. It was a rush of snap decisions and suddenly there was a deed in his pocket, keys in his hand, and a cat winding around his ankles and squeaking to demand some food (if all this shop ever brings him is Kit, it'll be worth it). He sells little charms, tonics, potions, he sells face masks that'll make your skin literally glow and balms for aches and strains. He does tarot readings and can tell the last five years and next two days of your life from your palm. His life is more full than it’s ever been, with a cat-familiar and regular customers, and a landlady who pushes borscht and cabbage rolls into his hands, but his life being more full than it's ever been isn't really an accomplishment, because Kent's life is still almost unbearably empty. 

He first notices the guy on a rainy Tuesday. Kent's windows open to the sidewalk, but he's always too busy with a recipe or a customer to really pay attention to the people going by. But he sees him first on a rainy Tuesday, when there are no customers to distract him and the shelves are fully stocked. On a sidewalk of people all hurrying through the rain, keeping their chins and eyes down, this dude walks by with his face up, glancing around at everything around him. He's absolutely soaked, is what Kent notices. but he doesn't seem to care much at all, just keeps on walking down until he's out of Kent's sight.

And then he's back the next day (which, thankfully for him, is a little sunnier). And Kent just. Keeps watching.

The guy walks by at approximately 10:15am every morning. It's a strange time to be out of work, and Kent wants desperately to know where he's going — mid-morning coffee break? early lunch? post-first-hour-tequila-shot? So Kent keeps watching, recipe down in front of him, forgotten, some sprigs of thyme that he should have been chopping up tucked behind his ear instead. 

After a week or so, the guy walks by wearing an Air Force jacket. Kent catches himself in a ridiculous amount of fantasies involving the guy swooping in flying an airplane to save him from some danger before he admits to himself that the guy is exactly his type. Then he watches the guy execute a slick dive to save an apple in the process of being dropped. Kent calls him Swoopy Guy in his head, quickly shortened to Swoops.

After maybe a month and a half, the guy comes in.

Kit greets him at the door with a trademark squeak, and the guy just kind of melts, crouches down and starts petting her and cooing.

“Hi!” Kent says. A beaker falls from his hand and shatters on the ground, sending glass shards and fragrant potion everywhere. Kent puts his empty hand behind his back. “Can I uh, help you with anything?”

A bowl he wasn’t even touching falls off the shelf and cracks. The guy stares at him.

“Good customer service is one thing,” he says, “but I’m really okay with waiting for you to clean up the _broken glass._ ”

“Right. Yep.” Kent fetches a broom and dustpan and attempts to concentrate on sweeping up glass. When he finishes, he finds Swoops poring over his face mask shelf, Kit curled up in his arms. 

“Your cat is really friendly,” Swoops remarks. Kent genuinely has heart palpitations. God, he hasn’t reacted to a guy like this since…well. Since Jack. 

“So, uh, what can I help you with?”

“It’s way past time I checked out the local shop instead of resigning myself to driving all the way the hell down to my old place. I work literally three doors down from here now.”

Three doors down is a sandwich shop in one direction and one of those generic office buildings with a couple different companies squished into it in the other.

“What do you do?”

“Computer shit. Server maintenance. A little web dev. Do you sell raw herbs or just finished products?”

Kent realizes belatedly that he should probably not be quizzing the customer. “I don’t put them out on the shelves, but yeah, I’ve sold them raw before. What did you have in mind?”

“I’m good for now, just checking,” says Swoops. “Right now I need to bless a server. See if that stops it acting up.”

Kent blinks for a moment, then turns to a shelf of oils. “How about Protection From Evil Spirits?”

“What’s the base?”

“Gum Arabic and althea root. With camphor for strength.”

“Sounds perfect.” 

“Do you mix magic with technology a lot?” asks Kent curiously, taking the oil behind the counter and wrapping it up. 

“Oh yeah.” The guy grins and leans on the counter. “I just got transferred divisions, and my boss is in the know, so he told the guy in charge of this division, ‘Give Jeff whatever he wants, he’s a literal wizard with tech,’ and I love it.”

_Jeff._

“That’s amazing,” says Kent, laughing. “I love the English language.”

“I mean, witch would be more accurate, but literal witch has different connotations,” says Jeff. He frowns. “I never thought about that before. That’s misogynistic as hell.”

“Actually, I have it on the utmost authority that Satan has great respect for women,” deadpans Kent. Jeff stares at him for a moment, and then starts laughing. Kent resists the urge to fistpump. 

“I gotta go to work, man, but thanks for the oil and the laugh,” says Jeff, handing over his credit card. Kent swipes it and hands it back.

“I hope you’ll come back,” he says awkwardly. “I’m Kent, by the way.”

“Jeff.” He gets a smile, and then the guy is gone, bell on the door ringing his exit. 

 

Kent pokes his head out of the door when Jeff walks by the next day.

“Hey, Jeff!”

Jeff turns around and grins. “Hey!”

“How did the oil work?” He spent most of the previous evening trying to come up with an excuse to stop Jeff, and thought of nothing more compelling than professional interest.

“So far, so good!” He holds up both hands with fingers crossed. “Server’s purring like a kitten, knock on wood.”

Kent raps his knuckles on his doorframe, and Jeff chuckles. “Gotta get to work, man, see you later.”

“Isn’t it a little late to be starting a workday?” Kent asks anyway. 

“When my boss said to give me anything I want? This is what I want. Mornings are the worst. So I keep the tech nice and happy, and they let me work 10:30-7:00.”

“Nice,” says Kent. “Have a good one.” Jeff waves and walks on. Kent shuts the door, lets out a breath, and relaxes against it. Well. That didn’t go too badly. He didn’t make an ass of himself, and nothing broke.

Kit squeaks at him reproachfully.

“What?” asks Kent. “I didn’t do anything.” Kit just blinks at him.

  


The next day, Kent’s stocking love potions when Kit starts winding around his feet.

“What’s wrong, baby girl?” he coos at her, eyes still on the label of the bottle in his hand. “It’s not time for lunch for another—whoa!” As he tries to step sideways, Kit ends up in exactly the wrong place, and Kent comes crashing down, clutching the bottle to his chest with one hand and stretching the other out to break his fall before he crushes Kit.

_Fuck._

Pain ricochets up his wrist. Kit leaps free just in time as Kent topples over, tears filling his eyes. 

“Ow, ow, dammit, why did you do that, girl? Ah, shit…” He lets go of the potion bottle in favor of clutching his wrist to his chest and curling up on the floor.

Kit mews at him in distress, then dashes to the front door and stretches up to reach the handle, pulling down on it to make the door open and shoving her way through. Were he not in so much pain, Kent would marvel at the fact his cat apparently knows how to open the door and just never bothered before.

Kit yowls outside. Kent has no idea what she expects him to do, drive himself to the hospital?

“Hey, is everything okay? Kent!”

It’s _Jeff._

“What are you doing here?” croaks Kent.

“Your cat yelled at me. What’s wrong?”

“Might’ve broke my wrist.”

Jeff winces in sympathy and reaches out to rest a hand on Kent’s shoulder. “Do you need a ride to the hospital?”

Kent wants to say no and preserve his own dignity, but to be honest, even if he can drive one-handed, of which he is not at all sure, he’s in enough pain that it’s a really dumb idea. “Don’t you have work?”

“I’m a pretty reliable worker. If I call in and tell them there’s an emergency, it’ll be fine.”

“Okay.” Kent gives in. 

It takes some maneuvering, but Jeff gets him back up on his feet, grabs his keys, flips the sign to Closed and locks the door behind them.

“Will your cat be okay alone?”

“Yeah. She’s tough stuff.” Kent insists on walking unaided to Jeff’s car, so Jeff pulls out his phone and makes a call.

“Hey Will. Yeah, I’m gonna be late? A friend needs a ride to the hospital. I’ll be in as soon as I drop him off.” A pause. “Cool, thanks. See you later.”

They make the drive in relative silence. Jeff lets him out in front of the hospital, saying, “Do you want me to come in and help fill out forms?”

“Nah, it’s not my dominant hand. Thanks, though.”

“Let me give you my number so you can call me when you’re through here?”

“I don’t want to pull you away from work twice,” Kent protests.

“Please? It’ll make me feel better.”

Kent unlocks his phone one-handed and gives it to Jeff, who puts himself in, then sends himself a text. “There.” He grins at Kent. “Call me when you get out? Just so I know?”

It’s just a sprain, and it doesn’t take eight hours to get discharged, so Kent calls Jeff to keep his promise, but insists on getting his ride back to the shop from Scraps, to whom he then spends the whole ride gushing about Jeff. 

Nikodem Skrzypek is a second-generation Polish giant and the son of Kent’s landlady, and thankfully already had a nickname pronounceable to Kent’s American tongue when they met so Kent didn’t have to embarrass himself trying to remember how to pronounce four consonants in a row. 

“C’mon, man, just let me take you home,” pleads Scraps. “We can grab your cat and then drive to your place.”

“I’ve already lost half a day of work. And then you’d have to drag me to work in the morning and shit. It’s fine, I have a bed in the back of the shop,” says Kent. “And cat food. That’s all I need.”

“Fuckin’ A,” says Scraps, and steals Kent’s phone out of his pocket. 

“What are you doing, you don’t even know my password?” Except Scraps apparently does, because he types it in after only a moment’s hesitation.

“You’re not subtle, Parser,” he says, and types for a long minute, easily dodging Kent’s swiping for it by virtue of having six inches, a hundred pounds, and a working left hand on him. When Kent finally gets his phone back, his text thread to Jeff is open, and he instantly regrets telling Scraps the story.

 _Hey, man, this is Kent’s friend Nik. He’s insisting on finishing out the work day and sleeping at the shop. Any backup you could provide would be great._ And then Scraps’ number.

“You fucker,” says Kent with little heat. He can’t work up too much righteous anger when he knows Scraps just cares and doesn’t know how to deal with his stubbornness. 

_Don’t listen to Scraps, I’m fine,_ he sends, and unlocks the front door. Kit rushes the door, crying at him, and he reaches down to scritch her head. 

“Are you sorry for tripping me, Princess? It’s okay, I forgive you,” he tells her. 

He’s forgotten about the texts to Jeff entirely when the man walks in at three minutes after seven.

“D’you like Chinese?” says Jeff without preamble.

“Uh. Yes?”

“Have you eaten dinner?”

“No?”

“Cool. Bee-are-bee.” He’s gone before Kent can chirp him about saying acronyms out loud.

Ten minutes later, he’s back, with full plastic bags from the Chinese place down the way. Kent is speechless.

“You got somewhere convenient to eat this?” asks Jeff, so Kent takes him to the tarot card table and stares as Jeff unpacks cartons and plastic silverware. 

“…What?” he finally manages, after a full five minutes of silence.

“You’re clearly terrible at both taking care of yourself and letting other people do it, so I’m not giving you a choice,” says Jeff. Kent gives up and sits down to eat his dinner.

Jeff turns out to be _nice._ And funny. And generally charming. It is far too much like his airplane fantasies, albeit sans airplane, and Kent thinks it is Not Fair. Kit is sitting in Swoops’ lap, the traitor, and Kent keeps staring at her, remembering how she ran out to get Jeff and silently imploring her to reveal her secrets.

“All right,” says Swoops when they’re done eating. “What do you have for healing?”

Kent blinks at him. This guy makes him speechless far too often for comfort.

“You run a magic shop,” says Swoops. “I know you’ve got something. I could run home and get my own stuff, but it’ll be much faster if you just tell me what’s already here.”

“Uh,” says Kent. “There’s an anti-inflammatory balm. Made of marjoram, aloe, and garlic. A rosemary alcohol for pain. Couple different forms of turmeric. And an ash rub, that’s for wisdom, but it’ll do for anti-inflammatory too.” Jeff riffles through the shelves and comes back with the balm and the ash rub. Kent carefully unwraps his wrist to let Jeff apply the balm, and gently rubs the ash into it.

“Hey. You know what else you can do with marjoram, aloe, and ash?”

“You mean besides the Soul Song spell?” Kent racks his brain, but nothing comes to mind besides the plot device of a hundred witches’ fairy tales.

“No.” 

Kent stares up at him.

“No?”

“No. I don’t mean _besides_ the Soul Song spell.” Jeff is very close, and Kent feels his breath catch.

“Why do you bring that up?”

“Why not? You’ve already got all the ingredients. What could it hurt?”

What could it _hurt_ is not really the question. Witches gossip, and Kent has heard more than a few stories of couples trying the spell, only to cause major drama when they didn’t hear their Soul Song. It’s just. Not really something people do when they’ve only just met and haven’t even talked about going on a date. Not the usual sort of conversation one has over a sprained wrist and leftover Chinese food. 

“Could be real awkward.”

“Or it could not be.” They stare at each other. Almost without thinking about it, Kent rubs his left wrist over his right, spreading the mixture over both pulse points, and whispers the incantation featuring in so many stories, any witch who reads with regularity has it memorized.

_“Anassa kata, kalo kale, ia nike.”_

Jeff leans in to kiss him.

Song explodes in Kent’s ears as their lips meet, and he gasps. Jeff reacts by pulling back, and the music fades as quickly as it started.

“Did you hear it?” asks Jeff, wonder in his voice, like he hasn’t just walked in here to sweep Kent off his feet with taking care of him and the fucking Soul Song spell like the fucking soulmate that he apparently is.

“Yeah,” Kent whispers back. “Fucking Swoops.”

“What?” says Jeff, and Kent starts to laugh.

“Long story. Got the whole rest of our lives to tell it. Rather be kissing you.”

“Okay, Soulmate,” says Jeff, and he does.

The melody is the purest thing Kent has ever heard.

**Author's Note:**

> Questions you probably didn’t have but I want you to know the answer to anyway:
> 
> Q: Who runs the magic shop Swoops used to go to? A: Jack and Bitty.
> 
> Q: Who is Jeff's boss? A: The one who called him a literal wizard is Shitty. Will is Dex.
> 
> Q: Was Kit winding around Kent’s feet trying to get him to notice that it was Time To Watch Swoops Out the Window? A: Yes.
> 
> Q: What’s Kent’s passcode? A: Jack’s birthday.
> 
> Q: Why marjoram, aloe, and ash? A: All three have topical healing properties. Marjoram is also happiness and love, aloe is also love, and ash is also psychic powers. According to my quick googling, anyway.
> 
> Q: Isn’t the garlic going to interfere? A: No, it just makes the spell stronger.
> 
> Q: Is that incantation actually about finding your soulmate? A: No, it is not. It is about summoning Athena to come and do battle for you. Which tbh should be a good incantation to do anything. It also happens to be a modified version of my school's battle cry.
> 
> People in the comments keep talking about how Kit and Scraps are teaming up to get Kent and Swoops together but tbh Scraps just went 'hey this guy clearly cares enough about Kent to drive him to the hospital and ask him to check in, and that means I don't have to be the only one looking after this dumbass,' and that got me thinking about how the three of them are really in cahoots to protect Kent from himself and that inspired this:
> 
>  


End file.
